The Washington Nationals are on the West coast again, albeit just a weekend trip before the Nats head to Kansas City for a 3-game series, and then back home to D.C. for a 4-game series against the Phillies to start on Thursday.
Tonight looks to be a bullpen game for the Giants with lefty Matt Gage starting. He hasn’t given up an earnie in his 15.0 innings of work. The Nats start Jake Irvin.
The question that many are asking is when Dylan Crews will return to the big league roster. A safe guess is Thursday for that Phillies series. A smaller chance that it would be Monday in Kansas City. The other question is how the Nationals turn up the energy level as well as having the entire team hustling instead of just a few players.
“Brady House has not been hitting good against lefties. I wanted Paul DeJong, he’s been swinging the bat good. JB right-handed, he’s not swinging the back good either. He’s a better left-handed hitter. So I was just trying to go with giving a chance to Luis to play second base to see if he can do a better job. But I guess I gotta do a better job doing the lineup against lefties.”
— Miguel Cairo said after yesterday’s game
The bullpen usage looks like this:
Here are your Nats’ WAR leaders with CJ Abrams at +2.8, James Wood at +2.8, MacKenzie Gore at +2.4. Add those up, and you get a total of +8.0 WAR. The issue is the large gap between those players and the next tier.
On defense, the OAA stats took a hit recently with a bunch of errors, and Luis Garcia Jr. lost a ball in the sun that hurt his defensive stats. Jacob Young leads the team at +11, and CJ Abrams is on the opposite end at -10. That is actually quite the improvement over last year’s -18 for Abrams who is on pace to finish at -14.
These are your stats leaders on BBRef. There are certainly some surprises on there — good and not so good. The issue is the consistency on this team.
“You got 26 players in there and maybe 10 coaches. We got to do our job and we gotta get better. Simple as that, and we got seven weeks to do it. And yesterday it was nice to see the guys battling. And they’re still battling. I’m gonna tell you, they’re going over there, they’re battling every day, they’re working.”
— Cairo said after the game
The Nats starting pitchers have a combined ERA of 5.01 and that places the starters at 2nd from last in MLB. The reliever’s ERA sits at a 5.92 and now the worst in baseball in ERA.
Here is how the starters rank by ERA:
No. 5 Starter: Cade Cavalli 0.00
No. 4 Starter: Mitchell Parker 5.43
No. 3 Starter: Brad Lord 3.42 (starting/relieving)
No. 2 Starter: Jake Irvin 4.89
No. 1 Starter: MacKenzie Gore 4.29
Washington Nationals vs. San Francisco Giants
Stadium: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.
1st Pitch: 10:15 pm EDT
TV: MASN2
Radio: 106.7 The Fan radio and via the MLB app; In Spanish on DC 87.7 FM and La Pantera 100.7 FM/1220 AM. On Sirius/XM, tune to Channel 188 for the home broadcast and the road team is online only.
Line-up subject to change (without notice):
